If you are a working parent, you are faced with a constant battle of balancing your career and family. It never comes easy especially if you want to succeed at both. Delivering on both commitments needs a support system, and in this case, employers too have a role to play. In order for working parents to be set up for success, employers should endeavour to offer a combination of a flexible work schedule, onsite child care, remote work, and so many other important aspects as pointed out below. Henriette Niragire, a chief chemist /quality control manager at LuNa Smelter, a mining company and Rwandan tin smelting plant located in Kigali says when it comes to supporting working parents in general; there is need for mutual understanding. She says employers should for instance be flexible when an employee would like to work from home to be close to their young children, adding that this can apply to both male and female employees. “In some instances, if a child is sick and needs special attention, the best way to help the parents of such child is to allow them be close to them,” she says. Niragire also feels that employers should learn to understand and focus on work done by their employees and not dwell much on their presence at the office. She goes on to add that employers should as well focus on engagement- commitment at work and understand when it comes to time for family. It is also vital to respect working conditions as per labour law, working hours, and holidays among others, according to Niragire. Sylvie Nsanga, a social cluster digitalisation specialist believes that there is also need to look into unpaid care work; this is especially true for female employees. Here, she says this is something many people don’t understand yet it has been documented for so many years. Women don’t demand to be paid for unpaid care work, but there is need for unpaid care work to be recognised as work, which is contributing to the country’s development, she says, adding that, it needs to be distributed among both sexes so that men also take and share the burden. “For women, life doesn’t stop if we have unpaid care issues like taking care of a sick child or taking up housework, unlike our male counterparts, when they are into professional work, that is it,” she says. Nsanga believes that to work on this, there is need for employers to work closely with other concerned bodies to rectify this. Most importantly, she says there has to be a clear policy on unpaid care work. She also adds that digitalisation can also mitigate some of the hardships of unpaid care work women are going through. “Equipping them with digitalisation skills can be of help as it will help them sail through some of these hardships with ease,” she says. Consider flexibility Alphonse Uworwabayeho, a lecturer of mathematics at University of Rwanda’s College of Education says if there is work flexibility, it offers employees a balance between their professional and personal lives, leading to job satisfaction and high performance, and an overall improvement of the organisation as a whole. With digital advancements and improved technology, he says work flexibility is very important as it helps employees continue their work anywhere they wish, provided they have internet connection. In cases where employees are underperforming, he says it’s essential for managers to find out why. “Most of the time the problem comes from the managers or employers themselves because they don’t motivate their workers in different ways,” he says. Another important aspect, the lecturer says employers should strive at clarifying or setting goals for their projects, define standards and expectations by giving a clear set of targets that are to be achieved by employees. “Employees should have a clear picture of why they have to do a task so that they fully understand the importance of their work,” he says. Also, it’s essential for employees to have a clear understanding of what is expected of them even before they are hired. Holding employees accountable for what they do and do so regularly is also vital, as it is the only way to ensure consistent performance from workers, according to Uworwabayeho. Augustin Manirakiza, former immediate vice president of the Rwanda Pharmaceutical Students Association (RPSA) says establishing of day care centres for employees’ toddlers is vital. He notes that there should also be enough and regular salaries or wages to be paid on time such that parents can take care of their family’s needs. “Regular hours of work, provision of work health insurance, permanent work contracts are just some of the things employers should look into when it comes to helping their working parents.”
